Rowling was right all along! Even critics admit suspicion of puberty blockers, surgery on kids and men in women's sport is NOT transphobia
JK Rowling is explaining herself. It's time her detractors listen. Her message, as she says in the fourth episode of 'The Witch Trials of JK Rowling' podcast: Transgender identity is real. She is sympathetic.
You'd think this would generate headlines — JK Rowling, public enemy number one of the trans community, countering her critics. But no.
Rowling offers her nuanced thoughts in this podcast, informed by voluminous reading and research and her own past as well: an abused wife, pregnant and in fear for her life, her baby, and her first Potter manuscript, which she says was held hostage by her then-husband.
As a tortured teenager who questioned her own femininity and sexuality. As a woman worried for other women who feel they are being systematically marginalized, threatened, and silenced, but who cannot afford — literally, financially — to speak up.
'Did I want to join the public conversation?' she asks. 'Yes... because I was watching women being shut down. And it was as though there was no woman perfect enough to say her piece.'
She knew well what would happen.
'There were people close to me,' she says, 'who were BEGGING me not to do it . . . they'd watched what had happened to other public figures and there was certainly a feeling of, 'This is not a wise thing to do; don't do it.'
We've never heard Rowling reveal so much of herself and her thought processes, and it's fascinating. What she has to say can't be boiled down to a tweet or a like on Instagram, and hallelujah — someone in the public square courageously demanding conversation and debate. As grown-ups should.
Apparently, the Potter books are no longer regarded as proof, so it must be said: Rowling possesses a sharp, unique, provocative mind. She is all too self-aware. She deserves much more than being treated as a caricature in much of mainstream and social media. Yet even this podcast, a valuable addition to what should be respectful and informed debate, has been dismissed in the usual outlets.
'Exhausting,' said Monica Hesse in the Washington Post. Hesse couldn't point to any one thing Rowling has ever said that's transphobic, but the author, Hesse wrote, nonetheless has 'a fuzzy aura of harmful rhetoric.'
New York magazine, Vulture: 'Can Anyone Trust the Witch Trials of JK Rowling?' Podcast critic Nicholas Quah, after listening to just the first two episodes, decried the concept of actually letting Rowling explain herself: 'That Rowling's perspective so utterly dominates the podcast's opening stages is incredibly frustrating,' Quah writes.
Wow. The whole point of this podcast is to examine how the most beloved author of our era has become the subject — I doubt Rowling would ever use the word 'victim' — of an international witch hunt, online and off.
Would Quah have written the same sentence about a complicated, misunderstood man? Displayed — ostensibly anathema to a critic — an already closed mind?
Episode four delves into the surging rates of tweens and teens transitioning — a sudden surge in biological girls identifying as boys especially — and a medical community all too willing to put these children on puberty blockers or remove breasts or alter genitalia without comprehensive psychological evaluations.
Teenagers who later decide to de-transition face very real consequences: Biological girls face infertility. Biological boys may never experience an orgasm. But to investigate social contagion, the valorization some parents take in having a trans child, the phenomenon of detransitioning — the numbers, the reasons why, the ages at which this is most common — is to be transphobic.
Frankly, that's insane. Rowling's not alone here, and there's no doubt her outspokenness is encouraging others.
Take Jamie Reed, a 42-year-old self-identified queer woman, politically to the left of Bernie Sanders, married to a transman, and a recent whistleblower who quit her job at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Hospital last November.
'I could no longer participate in what was happening there,' Reed wrote in the Free Press. 'By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to 'do no harm.' Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.'
Then there's former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, speaking out about the essential unfairness of competing against those born biologically male and biological female athletes no longer having their own locker rooms — their own safe space. She said last month that she has received multiple private messages of thanks and endorsement from elite male and female athletes, but is disheartened by their reluctance to go public.
'Now I realize these private thanks,' Gaines said, 'make them responsible for this continuing and advancing as it has.'
You only need to look at the faces of any female swimmer competing against Lia Thomas, a trans female, as they lose and lose again to someone with greater wingspan and lung capacity and upper body strength: The futility, the pain, the utter disconsolation at never having a chance in their chosen sport, one that required enormous personal and financial sacrifice, afraid to express their anger because the mainstream media is cheering this on as a heartwarming story.
JK Rowling is shifting the conversation. The BBC, which airs the series 'Strike' based on Rowling's adult detective novels (published under her pen name Robert Galbraith), apologized twice to the author last month for not defending her against charges of transphobia. They have renewed 'Strike' for a sixth season and have made it clear: The BBC stands with her.
In Finland, Sweden and the UK, there has been a sharp pullback on medical interventions for kids who identify as trans. Last July, Britain's National Health announced Tavistock, the UK's only clinic for transgender youth, would close in favor of new, smaller centers and protocols. Too many children, said Dr. Hilary Cass, head of the Tavistock review, are 'at considerable risk' of depression and impaired mental health. One clinic alone, Cass said, is not 'a safe or viable long-term option.'
Even The New York Times is coming around, recently publishing an op-ed titled 'In Defense of JK Rowling.'
'The campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd,' columnist Pamela Paul wrote last month. 'The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of what can happen when writers are demonized. And in Rowling's case, the characterization of her as a transphobe doesn't square with her actual views.'
The notion that the Times would publish such a defense, rather than fold to woke junior staffers having philosophical seizures on Slack, would have been unthinkable a year ago. Now, top editors at the Times, it seems, have begun regenerating their spinal columns, telling staff that there is now zero tolerance for its own journalists protesting the way the Times covers this issue in all its complexity.
Thank JK Rowling. She's not just encouraging others to summon their courage. She's forcing them to admit -- she has some valid points
In this podcast episode, Rowling addresses the costs not just to biological women but to young kids. Here she shares her own private torment as a confused young girl and adolescent:
'I grew up in what I would say was quite a misogynistic household,' Rowling says. 'Like all young girls, I grew up with certain standards of beauty and ideas of femininity, and I felt I didn't fit into either of those groups. I didn't feel particularly feminine . . . I looked very androgynous at 11 and 12. I had short hair.'
She says she felt the very common anxiety young girls do as their bodies change, as they develop and get their periods, as their bodies become something boys and men observe in new ways — ways that can carry shame or ambivalence, a wish to stop what's happening.
'It's very difficult to cope with that,' Rowling says. 'I questioned my sexuality. I'm thinking, 'Well, I can tell my friends are pretty — does that mean I'm gay?' Which I think is very common. I grew up to be a straight woman, but I've never forgotten that feeling of anxiety around my body . . . Having felt like an outsider in several different ways in my life, I have a real feeling for the underdog. And I have a real feeling for people who feel that they don't fit. And I see that, hugely, particularly, among younger trans people. I can understand that feeling only too well.'
JK Rowling is speaking. The tide is turning. Will her most vehement critics begin to admit fault?
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"Our Father"
The Church of England is considering scrapping centuries of Christian teaching to give God gender-neutral pronouns. The church has confirmed that its Liturgical Commission has launched a special project to examine updating future teachings. Some priests have already made such changes, rewriting the ‘Our Father’ that starts the Lord’s Prayer to ‘Our Father and Mother’.
The problem here is whether they wish to remain Christian or not – whether they wish remain followers of Jesus Christ, or whether they have decided they are smarter than Jesus. In Matthew 6:9 Jesus says ‘pray like this – Our Father…’ And in Luke 11:2 when Jesus is asked by his followers to ‘teach us to pray’ he says the same thing: ‘Father…’
The words of Jesus were recorded in Koine Greek (the global language of the first century) so the New Testament uses pater the Greek word for ‘father’ at this point. On other occasions Jesus told his followers to address God as abba – a word of family intimacy for a father. It sounds disrespectful, but the nearest English equivalent might be ‘Dad’ or ‘Daddy’. This concept of fatherhood is fundamental to humanity. Essentially it is a relational word. It is a parental word.
If Jesus wants us to address God as ‘Our Father’ then no Church of England liturgical commission has a licence to change it in the interest of being more woke. The Rev. Ian Paul, a member of the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, is among those decrying it as a step too far. He stressed that ‘male and female imagery is not interchangeable’ adding, ‘the fact that God is called “Father” can’t be substituted by “Mother” without changing meaning, nor can it be gender-neutralised to “Parent” without loss of meaning.’
Fathers and mothers (he stressed) are not interchangeable but they relate to their offspring in different ways. For some people this is a problem because they didn’t know their father, or had a difficult relationship with their father. There are others who have (or had) a really good Dad. But in both cases we need to get over the hurdle of human, fallible fathers – and see a bigger picture of God’s Cosmic Fatherhood beyond that.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/language-51/
********************************************************Terrorism everywhere (except among Muslims)
UK government has named an inquiry into the causes of terrorism ‘Prevent’ when, as has now been revealed, only 20 per cent of the inquiry’s budget was spent on the surveillance of Muslims, known to be responsible for 90 per cent of UK terrorist attacks (including the Manchester Arena bombing which triggered the inquiry), and 80 per cent of it on the surveillance of non-Muslims known to hold the odd conservative opinion.
Prevent’s credibility has been further undermined by its assertion that the books people read and the films and TV they watch can identify them as potentially dangerous extremists. This would be understandable if the inquiry had revealed that a disproportionate number of British cleaners have reported seeing copies of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on their employers’ coffee tables and swastika or Isis flag screensavers on their laptops.
But according to William Shawcross, the journalist brought out of retirement to head up Prevent, it is books like Lord of the Rings, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Complete Works of Shakespeare we should be concerned about, as well as films like Bridge On the River Kwai, The Dam Busters and The Great Escape, not to mention TV shows like Yes Minister, The Thick of it and – perhaps most worryingly – Great British Railway Journeys, presented as it is by that most sinister and subversive influencer Michael Portillo.
If such tomes and titles really are, as Prevent asserts, ‘key texts for white supremacists’ and ‘likely to encourage far-right sympathies’, the next generation of British suicide bombers and shopping mall stabbers will come not from the madrassas of Peshawar but the aged care facilities of Tunbridge Wells.
But compared with the people who actually make books and films, British politicians have rather dragged their heels in their attempts to impose a prophylactic snowflake agenda. The decision by Puffin, Penguin’s children’s imprint, to substantially rewrite Roald Dahl’s oeuvre to make it more inclusive is just an unusually conspicuous example of the woke paternalism which has gained controlling traction in most Western publishing houses and production companies. Penguin is by no means the only publisher which submits all its manuscripts to a ‘sensitivity reader’, and for years now, film and TV casting directors have had to observe increasingly stringent ethnic diversity quotas whether the job is a washing powder commercial or a Regency drama, the often Pythonesque results of which can be seen in Netflix’s otherwise quite watchable Bridgerton and the BBC’s utterly unwatchable Sanditon.
Meanwhile the presence on sex-scene sets of an ‘intimacy coordinator’ has become such a Hollywood commonplace that Steve Coogan made it a plotline of Chivalry, his latest post-modern vanity project.
The corporate world, never slow to tick ideological boxes, has formalised at boardroom level its commitment to creating and maintaining ‘safe spaces’. Not long ago, only the largest companies who could afford to employ HR managers, most of them sociology graduates whose job was restricted to mediating sexual harassment claims. Today, HR is the front line in the war against every kind of ethnic and gender discrimination in the workplace, and the role of HR managers has evolved from corporate introspection to PR.
And just as publishing companies now employ sensitivity readers to make sure authors who express views which do not chime with the prevailing orthodoxy don’t get read, it cannot be long before the purview of HR Managers will extend to recruitment, where they will be responsible for ensuring that people with political, social or cultural views which are inconsistent with the twitter-proof banality of the company’s home page don’t get hired.
The only large institutions which don’t need to invest heavily in HR are, of course, our universities. This is because their bosses know they can rely on even the lowest paid faculty member to police the opinions of their co-workers as efficiently as any HR manager, and that anyone who is already on the payroll, but who strays from the official narrative on anything from climate change to personal pronouns, can be fired with impunity.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/03/aussie-life-108/
**************************************************************Musk Says FTC Probe of Twitter Is ‘Weaponization’ of Government and ‘Serious Attack’ on Constitution
Elon Musk is calling efforts by the Federal Trade Commission to force his company Twitter to release details about the journalists with whom it collaborated on the “Twitter files” exposés an effort in truth suppression by the Biden administration and a violation of the First Amendment.
Following reports that the FTC has sent more than a dozen demand letters to Twitter since he took over the company in October 2022 asking it for internal communications about layoffs, the company’s new Twitter Blue service, and Mr. Musk himself, the tech entrepreneur called the letters a “shameful case of weaponization of a government agency for political purposes and the suppression of truth.”
“This is a serious attack on the Constitution by a federal agency,” he added.
Portions of the letters were released by a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee that is investigating the so-called weaponization of the federal government. The committee said the FTC’s more than 350 demands are an attempt to harass the company and pry into deliberations that are outside the FTC’s mandate.
“The timing, scope, and frequency of the FTC’s demands to Twitter suggest a partisan motivation to its action,” a report by the Republican-controlled committee stated.
“There is no logical reason, for example, why the FTC needs to know the identities of journalists engaging with Twitter,” it added. “There is no logical reason why the FTC, on the basis of user privacy, needs to analyze all of Twitter’s personnel decisions. And there is no logical reason why the FTC needs every single internal Twitter communication about Elon Musk.”
Among the information demanded by the FTC was details about the journalists’ work on the Twitter files that focused on government collusion with tech companies to suppress content about the Covid pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. The agency also demanded “every single” internal communication relating to Mr. Musk, details about whether the company is selling office equipment, why it terminated a former FBI official who had been working at the company, and when it first conceived of the new Twitter Blue subscription plan. The agency also said it wants to depose Mr. Musk on the matters.
Twitter has been in the FTC’s crosshairs since 2010 over complaints about users’ privacy and who has access to their content and private messages. The company settled its dispute with the agency in 2022 by agreeing to pay a $150 million civil fine and to take a number of steps to protect users’ phone numbers and email addresses. The FTC maintains that the terms of that agreement allow them to intervene in the company’s internal affairs.
“Protecting consumers’ privacy is exactly what the FTC is supposed to do,” an FTC spokesman, Douglas Farrar, told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the existence of the letters. The agency is “conducting a rigorous investigation into Twitter’s compliance with a consent order that came into effect long before Mr. Musk purchased the company,” he added.
After being criticized for years by conservatives who believe the company, under its previous leadership, routinely censored right-leaning users and viewpoints, Mr. Musk’s takeover of the company was heralded as a chance to return it to its free speech roots. Since he took it over, Mr. Musk has reinstated accounts — including that of President Trump — that previously had been banned and dialed back its efforts to suppress certain viewpoints.
Mr. Musk also allowed a number of independent journalists access to the internal communications of its previous owners documenting widespread collusion between politicians, public health authorities, the intelligence community, and others with Twitter’s content moderators. The subsequent articles came to be known as the “Twitter files.”
The loosening of Twitter’s censorship regime and disclosures about collusion have rankled many Democrats and liberals in the Biden administration who are avid users of the platform. In November, within weeks of Mr. Musk’s purchase of the company, seven Democratic senators sent a letter to the chairwoman of the FTC, Democrat Lina Khan, urging her to crack down on the company.
“In recent weeks, Twitter’s new Chief Executive Officer, Elon Musk, has taken alarming steps that have undermined the integrity and safety of the platform, and announced new features despite clear warnings those changes would be abused for fraud, scams, and dangerous impersonation,” the lawmakers said.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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